Feb 19 The Way of Adventure

Blake Boles is an unschooling and self-directed learning advocate, that I have been following for nearly a year now. He is now the process of launching a free online self-paced course for self-directed teens. I initially saw his call for beta testers late last year, and immediately jumped into it. Having learnt so much about alternative education from Blake's websites and books, I definitely wanted to assist with a course that would allow so many more teens to experience and learn from his wealth of knowledge.

Blake Boles is involved with educating and challenging young adults to be better self-directed learners. He has written three books, and I definitely would recommend reading Better than College, which really made me reflect on the education choices I was making. He also blogs and writes fantastic articles about education, adventure and alternative education.

"This course is an introduction to building an adventurous life. It’s free, self-paced, and designed for young adults with basic English reading, writing, and Googling skills. You can participate from anywhere in the world.

The course is meant for 13- to 23-year-olds, but curious people of all ages are welcome to participate.

This is not your typical “online course.” Think of it more like a scavenger hunt packed with weird, entertaining, and difficult challenges that involve doing things with real people in the real world."

"Adventure is not about visiting more countries than other people. It’s not about climbing tall peaks or kayaking dangerous rivers. What separates adventurous people from non-adventurous people is having a mission in life. Having a purpose, a guiding principle, a “why.”

So what is your mission? Who the hell knows? (And if you think you know for sure, you’re probably wrong.) You’re young, and you do not need to know “what you’re doing with your life.” Distrust anyone who insists otherwise.

You should be exploring, probing, and immersing yourself in different fields, skills, and pursuits. You should be continuously building your version of how the world works, what’s important, what’s not, and what’s deserving of the precious little time you have on this earth.

If you want to lead a life of purpose, excitement, and meaningful challenge: you need a mission. There is no other way."

This course has a lot of very valuable information in it, and that lays the foundation for the challenges in the latter half of the course. There are many tasks in this course that force you to think independently and look outside of the box for answers. The tasks get you out in the community talking to strangers and learning new things.

If you wish to complete the course, documentation in the way of a personal portfolio is required for each of the challenges. Full completion of the course will give you entry into the alumni group of other course graduates, and the ability to play a role in encouraging the next group of young people undertaking The Way of Adventure.

I will be posting my journey and experiences with the challenges here for you to explore, and I would love to discuss the challenges with anyone thinking about undertaking them! This is definitely something new for me, so bear with me as I upload my challenge experiences.